With the beginning of the new academic year, students will begin researching for academic papers that will determine the grade earned. For many students, the research is for Internet sites that will provide an already prepared paper at no cost or one that will prepare a custom paper for a fee.
I am a tutor reviewer and facilitator for an online university and have reviewed over 20,000 student papers. The time required to download a previously prepared or even a custom-prepared paper may not be worth the time it takes to download because of the inevitable consequences. Universities have access to software that compares the paper against extensive databases of previously submitted student papers and Web site documents. A professor simply submits the student’s paper to the service (these become part of the database for future checking) and the service checks for words/phrases matching the database or Website documents. For each paper submitted, a report indicates a percentage match.
A “match” is not necessarily an indication of plagiarism. Properly cited/referenced material should match the original document. Plagiarism occurs when exact words/phrases match a database document word-for-word and there is no citation. The match can come from a previously submitted document that another student downloaded from a free site. How many others downloaded that document and submitted it for a grade? I have seen 15 papers submitted for a grade with 100% match—all papers were identical word-for-word. I could even find the Web site where the document originated.
The university’s student code of conduct or academic honesty policy may not offer a statue of limitations on plagiarism. If the university discovers that a student submitted a plagiarized document, previously submitted documents may be scrutinized, grades changed, scholarships forfeited, and expulsion may occur.
Variations, such as downloading and rewriting in your words, may diminish the potential of plagiarism, but the downloaded document may contain faulty logic or the sources are not valid. If students do not conduct the research, they will not know the subject or the validity of the sources; instead, they are relying on an unknown writer and basing their grade on a paper that might be inferior.
For those students who recognize that the shortcuts are not worth it, I offer some valuable advice:
First, accept that, for the most part, writing is self-taught. Students should solicit feedback to find their basic incorrect writing tendencies (problems with punctuation, style, or grammar). Submit a previous class’s paper (without comments or a grade) to the current class’s professor, the university’s writing lab, tutors, or other knowledgeable people, and ask for feedback. This is impracticable for the current paper with an approaching deadline.
Although not a substitute for a human review, www.twilocity.com can provide valuable feedback in minutes ($1.99 for 10 pages). Why give the paper’s grader an opportunity to reduce the grade when tools, such as this are available
Often, the time saved by finding a suitable document to submit for a grade is minimal, especially if the student rewrites it in an attempt to avoid plagiarism. Downloading robs the student of learning the topic and peace of mind. Ultimately, only the student can answer whether the shortcut was worth the time required to download the document.?
